Aging & Healthspan

Aging is not one thing. We all do it, and yet we all have our own journey. While we know some trends about aging - we'll all get more wrinkles, and risk for cancers and dementia will also go up over time. But who should worry about what? How can one tell if ones choices are preserving or degrading our healthspan - the time of our lives in which our lives are not dominated by age-related health challenges?

The number of people over 65 will not quite double by 2050, and I doubt the number of hospitals, doctors, and healthcare dollars will keep up. The emergence of the Internet of Things is just in time to provide a means for every individual to see their health through the lens of data. By identifying patterns of sleep, daily rhythms, and physiological stability, we hope to provide feedback to aging individuals so that they can see how their life choices affect their biological aging process.

Data from many thousands of people reveals that naps get more common as people get older (see the rates of non-nighttime sleep in the image above), but note also that naps are common in younger individuals too. It's probably the case that naps are part of human circadian rhythms, and that the modern 9-5 culture has blocked most of us from expressing this normal behavior. So naps can be good. But naps can be bad if they reveal a breakdown in normal sleep rhythms. We are developing tools to detect the emergence of good and bad naps in aging individuals as a way to support people on their aging journey. What other patterns are there, and how specific can we get when predicting different aging outcomes from these patterns in different people? No one knows, but we're trying to find out, so welcome to the new age of aging research!

Please also check out the Stein Institute for Research on Aging, where I have the privilege of serving as an associate director.